Authored by Michelle Belisle, Director Educational Quality and Assessment Programme at the Pacific Community (SPC).
Twenty years, 14 subjects, 37 schools and over 20,000 students across 6 countries. This is the story of the region’s senior secondary qualification, the South Pacific Form Seven Certificate (SPFSC) programme.
The Pacific Community (SPC), through its Educational Quality and Assessment Programme (EQAP), administers the SPFSC programme as a high-quality outcomes-based regional qualification.
EQAP, formerly known as the South Pacific Board for Educational Assessment (SPBEA), started offering the qualification in 2004. The development of the programme was at the request of SPBEA member countries wanting a Year 13 qualification that followed on from the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate (PSSC). Both qualifications intended to offer a direct pathway into the degree programmes of Universities in the Pacific region including in Australia and New Zealand.
The New Zealand Vice-Chancellors’ Committee acknowledged SPFSC as an entry qualification to New Zealand university degree courses in 2003. The University of the South Pacific also confirmed SPFSC as an entry qualification to its degree courses that same year.
The regional qualification initially offered 11 subjects with student enrolment numbers reaching no more than 500 students each year. By 2011 the qualification offered 14 subjects and enrolment gradually increased to as many as 1800 students in recent years.
The 14 subjects offered in SPFSC include Mathematics with Calculus, Mathematics with Statistics, English, French, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Accounting, Economics, Geography, History, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Agriculture, and Tourism and Hospitality. All subjects have internal assessment components and an external examination.
To date, six Pacific Island countries have enrolled students in the SPFSC qualification at various times including, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
Since its inception, the qualification has been owned by the Pacific. Participating countries are involved in the subject prescription developments and reviews. This is to ensure that the views of individual countries are always taken into consideration during the development process.
At present, EQAP carries out pre-assessment moderation and standardisation to ensure the validity and reliability of SPFSC examination results. EQAP officers conduct capacity building for Year 13 teachers yearly on classroom pedagogies, lesson planning, internal assessment processes, assessment moderation and how to use assessment data to inform instruction. The SPFSC qualification belongs to the Pacific Board for Educational Quality (PBEQ), on behalf of member countries and the PBEQ is now the awarding authority of the SPFSC qualification.
While it may seem strange that the enrolment numbers remain relatively low, that is in part because EQAP has worked with a number of countries to nationalise the SPFSC. Most recently, EQAP supported Vanuatu’s Ministry of Education and Training (MET) with harmonising the French and English curricula before nationalising the Year 13 qualification. Prior to that, EQAP worked with Tonga to nationalise their Form Seven certificate programme.
In 2023, Vanuatu rolled out the nationalised version of the SPFSC with EQAP’s support. EQAP is currently providing capacity support to Vanuatu’s Curriculum Development Unit in the review and redevelopment of Year 13 subject syllabi and the Examinations and Assessment unit in the development and moderation of national examination papers. EQAP will continue to support Vanuatu MET after the nationalisation process is complete.
As of 2024, Kiribati and Tuvalu are fully utilising this regional Year 13 qualification.
SPFSC is a technology-enhanced qualification that uses the Pacific Schools Information Management System (PacSIMS) for information management and results processing, and Moodle is a learning management system that provides a number of resources to students, teachers, school coordinators, and MOE officials. EQAP supports students in exam preparation by providing access to learning resources such as past year papers, scoring rubrics, chief scorer’s reports, sample scripts and interactive quizzes on the Moodle platform.
The EQAP officers also provide training on management and implementation of internal and external assessment components, and Moodle management to teachers. Continuous support via email communications, quarterly meetings and school visits from EQAP are provided throughout the year for timely dissemination of information and continuous support to schools.
While celebrating the 20 years of SPFSC in the Pacific, it is an opportune time to reflect on some of the advantages it offers to students, teachers and the region. The qualification is contextualised to the needs of the Pacific students. It is recognised by universities across the Pacific (including Australia and New Zealand) and internationally (USA, China, and Malaysia) who recognise SPFSC as a prerequisite to their undergraduate degree programmes. The SPFSC is an outcomes-based programme which means that students are assessed against the outcomes and achievement levels are awarded as earned, with no scaling of marks. Successful completion of this qualification is a true reflection of what students individually know and are able to do, without rank ordering of students to predetermined cut scores.
This International Literacy Day, we are celebrating 20 years of SPFSC. Through this regional qualification EQAP remains committed to providing Pacific students with quality education is a key driver for the development of the Blue Pacific continent.
